‘Tom was the love of my life,’ recalls Jane, 33. ‘I loved him so much and he adored me – so I ended it. I bumped into him again recently and we started meeting up. We got back together but, after raising his hopes, I said goodbye again. It was too intense.’
Jane has a job she likes, great friends and a wonderful house. But when it comes to relationships, there’s always someone sabotaging her chances of happiness: Jane. It sounds counter-intuitive, but many of us self-sabotage from time to time. A fantastic job comes up but you miss the application deadline. You work late and have to cancel meeting up with friends. You decide to save money for a holiday and, the next day, go on a frivolous spending spree.
‘Our inner saboteur is activated when we feel strong emotions – more often positive ones,’ explains psychotherapist Martha Baldwin Beveridge, author of Self-Sabotage (available from www.amazon.co.uk). ‘If someone expects rejection and instead experiences joy and happiness, it conflicts with their repressed expectation, so becoming a saboteur is a way of dealing with that, and creating an outcome that doesn’t conflict with their beliefs.’
In other words, if we have a deep-seated negative belief that conflicts with a positive experience, we sabotage our happiness in order to prove that our belief is true. If you grew up being told relationships are complicated or bring you pain, perhaps by a parent or other close relative who has had bad experiences, you ‘pick holes’ in one that’s going well – such as starting an argument with your partner on the way home from a great holiday. The ensuing misery vindicates your belief.
Fear of change
Our fear of happiness or success – rather than failure – often causes these emotional conflicts. One example is Imposter Syndrome: the feeling that we’re really only pretending to be good/capable/attractive. ‘You tell yourself “if only they knew what I’m really like… when are they going to find out the truth?”’ says Sebastian Bailey, psychologist at The Mind Gym. ‘This fear of being “found out” can trigger self-sabotaging behaviour.’
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Editor Louise Chunn asks is it time for feminism to be put back on the agenda.
This sounds like fantastic advice. As for those steps to ending this sabotaging behaviour, I made a very large payment (funded by a loan) which now means over 90% of my income, for up to eight years, goes on repayments. I have nothing to show for it.
The thing is the cheque was written without any goal or achievement needing to be achieved first, it was to cover the cost of mentoring to help me achieve goals, the amount being high enough to motivate me to achieve goals, but once cashed, then the motivation is gone (wish I knew that before writing the cheque) and you're back to feeling like a victim. Some people would argue that I am indulging victim mentality by writing this comment, what do you think?
On the upside, I am working towards achieve goals, though I have and at times are still am doing most of the sabotaging activities mentioned in this post.
I do believe however that Nolen-Hoeksema is wrong and that this rumination leads men to be equally likely to make poor decisions and equally likely to indulge in self-sabotaging behaviours. The rise of feminisim devalued men and boys and is in my opinion is a major cause for boys educational results to be poor compared to girls today. Could that be because boys self-sabotage because they don't feel as valued as girls any more?
Certainly true for me. I do it all the time.
Thankfully I've recognized this behaviour and hopefully able to control it , should i meet anyone ever agian.
I've lost my dream man, thanks to this behaviour, it has been so painful and not a nice place to be.
We must learn from our mistakes , no matter how hard, it feels.It's a must, for us to grow and start trusting that all will be well.
This is true for so many people. I really enjoyed this article.